1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates, generally, to means for watering and fertilizing potted plants or flowers in vases. More particularly, it relates to means for watering and fertilizing means that conserves water.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Some plants require daily watering and cannot be left unattended for more than a few days. Other plants require  drying out between watering. Their roots are heavily soaked, allowed to dry over a period of a week or so, and then heavily watered again.
These plants may be left unattended for a little more than a week, but not much more.
Plants also require fertilizer, but usually on a less frequent basis than water.
Numerous self-watering pots have been developed to enable plant caretakers to take vacations or to avoid daily and weekly watering of plants for other reasons. Typically, these methods include a remote reservoir of water in fluid communication with one of more pots.
In some designs, wicks are employed to draw water from an external reservoir into the soil within which a plant is rooted.
One of the drawbacks of the known systems is that no means are provided to regulate water flow to individual plants. Thus, all plants in the network receive about the same amount of water over a given period of time. Thus, too much water is provided to some plants and too little to others. As a result, water is wasted through excessive evaporation or by draining from the bottom of a pot containing an over-watered plant. Some plants are killed from  over-watering and some die from under-watering.
However, in view of the prior art considered as a whole at the time the present invention was made, it was not obvious to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art how the drawbacks of the known plant-watering systems could be overcome.